Glad to know that you have started taking interest in sports. We wholeheartedly support your initiative to bring our football to decent world rankings by inviting Brazil to overhaul our domestic football scenario. One hopes, our mandarins ruling the football, led by your friend and colleague, Mr Das Munshi, do not interfere with your idea and take Brazil down with us to some where around 125 or so! Since you have the Indian Football at heart, as a first step, please don’t allow him anywhere near a football ground for a period of at least five years.

The purpose of this letter is to appeal to you do something similar for Indian hockey. Indian hockey led by Mr. K.P.S. Gill, Jyothikumaran et al are exploring the depths our country could reach. They are succeeding in their efforts, as can be seen that we reach new low in each tournament year after year!

“The Hockey Wizard,” as the world calls him—Dhyan Chand—must be doing somersaults in his grave.

Indian hockey with great players such as Balbir Singh, Udham Singh, Balbir (Jr.), Leslie Claudius, Rajagopal, Deshmuthu, Govinda, Mohammed Shahid and Dhanraj Pillay to name only a few kept our National Flag flying for decades.

Jana Gana Mana played after Olympics would bring goose pimples and a lump in Nation’s collective throat.

As the team loses tournament after tournament, often ending in the bottom-half, players are sacked, coaches are tossed out, but the officials sit on their seats as if stuck with glue.

They are running Indian hockey like their personal fiefdom not accountable to the people, sporting public, the sports ministry, the Parliament or the nation at large.

It is only a sport we agree, but then how long can a set of people dearly hold on to their positions and be unaccountable with ‘a devil may care’ attitude, despite an avalanche of failures ever since they took charge, eons ago?

Since they are in a mood to quit, they should be thrown out, shown the door in the interest of Indian Hockey.

These gentlemen who only know how to play that have reduced hockey, once a National Game, to hookey.

Please act before our (un)friendly neighbour offers tips to you improve hockey in India when you visit them next.

5 comments

But DO u think, this Manmohan Singh, the mad of the maddest, has time to listen to all these? He would work out on how he could impress the Minority by gvng a pat on Mushraf/Bin Ladens Back…See what this Stupid PM has told

Mr.Singh says:”General Musharraf has assured me that Pakistan has no hand in perpetuating terrorist acts in India. He asked me not to go into the past, to forget whatever has happened in the past and to let us work together in the future.”

And Singh Nods his head and comes back!

So this Singh will forget whatever hapnd in the past, he is ready to forget the pain of all those families who lost their beloved ones may it be Bombing in Mumbai in 1995, or in Coimbatore or the recent train Bombing!

Country is in the poorest of the poor form because of Singh’s inefficiency…this guy is royally screwing up this Nation….and U expect him to Better Sports!

This seems to me the typical reaction that we have for any problem that our country faces. Blaming people at the top.
While politicians might be part of the problem, it would be foolhardy to expect that the poor performance of the hockey team would change if those at the top are replaced with somebody else. In fact the media had hailed the appointment of Gill & co not so long ago.
The simple fact is that the hockey team is also expected to play as per expectations. That simply did not happen.
That apart, just expecting the team to be great just because their were great players in the past just does not gel. That is like saying we should be a great nation just because we were so eons ago. In the past both spectator interest and official help (during British times) held the game together.
As a nation too we need to take our fair share of the blame for the decline in hockey. We just have not encouraged the sport as we used to earlier, be it as spectators, fans or sponsors. This has resulted in a very much reduced talent pool entering hockey and we seem to be surprised by the results.
Contrast this with the administration in the cricket world where things are equally mismanaged but we (myself included) seem to gloss over the happenings. Our cricket team too has had its fair share of setbacks but our backing for the sport has not diminished.
With the sport itself occupying a devalued position in our scheme of things, expecting a sudden turnaround in its fortunes seems misplaced.

Very well said Prasad. We ought to take the blame for the state of affairs with Indian Hockey. Bulk of us (including me) have forgotten that there exists several other games out there, it’s just not cricket !!!